1. Field of the Invention
Aspects of the present invention relate to a job control device, a multifunction device, and an operation method thereof. More particularly, aspects of the present invention relate to a job control device and a multifunction device designed to easily cope with a change in job control software, and an operation method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, the electronic devices that were in use, such as printers, scanners, or facsimile machines, generally only had a single function for each single device. Today, however, multifunction devices, which have diverse functions in one unit, have become widespread.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a conventional multifunction device. In FIG. 1, a multifunction device 1 includes devices 10 such as a printer 12, a scanner 14, a facsimile machine 16 and a medium 18. The printer 12, the scanner 14, the facsimile machine 16 and the medium 18 mounted in the multifunction device 1 can each perform independent functions.
The devices 10 are grouped together in the multifunction device 1 to provide functions such as copying and printing. To this end, software is required to control the devices 10 in the multifunction device 1. A piece of software that performs such a task is called a job control unit 30.
For example, if a user inputs a command through a user interface (UI) unit 20 in order to carry out copying and the input command is received by the job control unit 30, the job control unit 30 directs the scanner 14 to perform scanning and directs the printer 12 to print the scanned data.
The multifunction device 1 provides diverse functions such as N-up copying, reduced or enlarged copying, and transmission of copies to a host server, as well as simple copying. Such diverse functions require a change in the job control unit 30. The job control unit 30 is changed according to the requirements of a user or the situation of a manufacturer. In addition, the job control unit 30 is changed to suit multifunction devices 1 whenever the multifunction devices 1 are manufactured.
In order to facilitate the change of the job control unit 30, a solution multifunction device has been described. There are two types of solution multifunction devices. One is installed with a platform inside to download and execute a program suitable for the user environment thereof. The other controls functions in a network environment.
Building a platform and providing an interface environment using such solution multifunction devices is very expensive. In order to build a platform, the hardware used includes a high capacity memory and a high performance central processing unit (CPU), and a test environment for applications is necessary. Furthermore, in order to use the network environment, a basic environment that uses interface functions of a solution multifunction device on the web (such as the Site Open application programming interface (SOA)) has to be built.